Onesimus and Philemon

The old bishop coughed red blood into the rag held by the bright-eyed deacon. ‘Not long now’ he croaked. ‘I guess I won’t be a martyr after all. Not like Philemon. But he always did win, every way, every time’

The deacon who was nursing him sighed inwardly.  Here it came again – that old story of the favoured younger brother, the legitimate one, the beloved child, the one who had called Onesimus…

‘Do you know what he called me when we were boys? ‘Dusosmos’. ‘Smelly’. He said my real name, Onesimus, ‘useful,’ was just a lie, and ‘smelly’ about covered the facts.’

‘I think you did tell me that’ muttered the deacon, tenderly wiping the old man’s chin again. He began to feed him with the thin soup that was all the old man could keep down. Patient as a mother, he watched and waited for the swallowing, the moment when the next spoonful could be offered. Too soon and the choking would come again, and the vomiting. It was best to keep him talking, or he would simply fall asleep, and then not eat at all.

‘So your brother didn’t like you much?’ Another spoonful was accepted and swallowed. Another slow wait for the movement of the Adam's apple bobbing up and down in the thin throat.

‘He couldn’t bear me. I was a year older, but my mother was a slave. You’d think it was me who should have been jealous, but I loved him. Philemon. The beloved. Always. When we were very small, he loved me too, and I ... loved him. We played together all the time. But then…’ the old voice trailed off into a shuddering sigh.

The deacon wondered how many more times he would have to hear the story. And then his heart smote him. Not too many, by any count. He proferred another spoonful of soup, but the old man turned his head away.

‘One day I got really ill. I was nearly dead. My father was beside himself, and Philemon knew then that he loved me – and even though I was so ill, I could feel the hate my brother had for me. He hated my father loving anyone else than him.’ 

A pause. The deacon knew what came next, and even though he had heard it a hundred times, even the thought of it made the hair on his head rise. He prompted gently ‘What happened then?’

‘My father went to the nearest healer – and that was Jesus. He begged and pleaded with him to come, but he wouldn’t, kept saying my father just wanted to see a miracle. But then he said ‘Go, your son will live.” And that moment I was healed. I remember it clearly – it was a waking sweetly after a night of pain, and all the pain was gone.’

The two sat in silence, savouring the thought. The deacon roused himself to try again with the soup, but this time the refusal was more firm. No more soup that night. 

 ‘My father became a believer in Jesus, and after He rose from the dead, was there when the big sermon happened with Peter and the rest.’

His face, lightened up at the memory, clouded again. ‘But my life was a misery. Philemon took every chance to hurt and humiliate me, and he was the heir. I was just a slave-boy. It was easy for him to do. My father doted on him and he could do no wrong. And then, when we were teenagers my father died. The light went out in my life- and I was Philemon’s property. My mother had died having me. I had no-one and nothing. He… tortured me’

The bleary eyes were full of tears.

‘So I ran away. I ran as far and as fast as I could, and landed in Ephesus. I was scared and starving. I knew if I was caught I would be branded as a runaway. I remember lying under a bridge and wishing I could just die. And there the most amazing thing happened.’

‘What was that then?’ asked the deacon as he gently undressed the old man to ready him for bed. He knew the rhythms of this story. Not much remained.

‘Paul found me lying there. He tended the wounds, and fed me and clothed me’. The deacon nodded. He had seen the wounds: the scars of ancient beatings crisscrossing the old man’s back and shoulders in a hideous web of lumpen flesh, the badly set broken limbs. Onesimus did not say exactly how these wounds happened – only that bare sentence ‘He tortured me.’ The marvel was that he had escaped and lived.

‘So I became a Christian. I told Paul everything – things I never told anyone else. And then Paul asked me to do the hardest thing I ever did in my life. To go home. He told me Philemon was a Christian now, and would receive me as a brother, but I thought I knew better. My father had always believed Philemon too. But I went anyway, because I would do anything for Paul. And do you know, he was right? My brother was my brother again, the way we were as children, before he became jealous of my father’s love. And he sent me back to Paul again, a free man. But I held the bad memories in my heart and pondered them every day. I forgave him I thought. And then the news came of his martyrdom. They tortured him. They scourged him 'til he died beneath their blows, confessing Christ with his last breath. And then – only then did my bitter heart break and my love for my brother, my beloved little brother, now glorious in heaven, come back to me again.’

He straightened up, and smiled. ‘And soon, very soon, he and I will both be serving in the court of heaven.’ He took the few steps from chair to couch and lay there, panting and coughing with the effort.

‘Both of you useful and beloved’ prompted the deacon. He knew the end. They said together ‘and no-one smelly.’

Postscript: Onesimus was a slave whom St Paul returned to his master. There is internal evidence in the eponymous letter that Philemon was Onesimus' brother. In Colossians, another letter of Paul we find Onesimus on a mission with another disciple, and in later Christian texts a person of that name is listed as Bishop of Ephesus, so if that was the same man, he was freed and sent back to Paul. There is no evidence that he was the child healed in the Gospel Of John (4.46-54), but there is a sort of ambiguity about the story, where in some of the Gospel accounts the child is called the man's slave, and in others his son.